Q: MacBook Pro screen blinks

This is truly pathetic of Apple to not address this issue. I've looked at all my associates and friends who have this model and they all have the same blinking issue when set to "better battery performance" on their MBP.

I'll just have to deal with the blinking when traveling and using the MBP. Windows users will get a kick and huge laugh at Apple with this issue.

Got same problem with screen flickering in black totally random, had since early 2009 but just got it in for repair, this late because of need and use professionally of the computer. I also get major distortion when using some external LCD screens, fujitsu siemens for one.

Hoping they'll sort it for me because it's really starting to bug me out.

I'll be back with the outcome of the repair.

My late 2008 MBP has flickered since day one and now, the 9600 side is flickering, locking up. I have been putting off any repair because I wanted to see if others reported fixes, but it seems like they still, 14 months later, have this issue.

What is wrong with video lately? The Santa Rosa's has major video issues as well.

I have two MB470 in my family and one of them has that problem: once per one or two days the display flickers for one half of the second. Both laptop running on 10.6.2 and, after reading this topiс Ihave change back my hard disk drive (with it MBP comes from the store and the original Mac OS 10.5.6 was on it) and this problem is gone. There are no flickering during 3 days. I've checked it on both modes - with 9400 and 9600 adapters. I don't know will it helpful for anyone, but I believe I find the reason (just in my case).

PS Excuse me for my bad English

Interestingly the flickering can be temporarily fixed by punching (or just firmly pressing) in the middle of the left speaker. In this essence, the Macbook reminds me a TV from 80th, where one could improve the reception by hitting it as hard as he could.

Ok. After all i read in this thread and from my personal experience i also conclude that this problem is related to hardware since it only seems to affect mostly late 2008 mbps. However since most of the people here are on snow leopard and many of them did not have problems using leopard i think this could maybe be fixed by a software update. I experienced my flicker on snow leopard first. Did not tty to go back to leopard yet though. However if 10.6.3 does not fix this for me i will give my mbp to the servie. Maybe after 3 tries i will receive a new one two. This is inaceptable for a 1800€ machine!

Did someone try to make some waves on this on macrumors or any other platform to raise some attention on this topic?

Yeah, wrote some comments in macrumors about this issue after iMac update - problem looked the same, but seems to be not the same ;D

apple rocks. so much.

i could have had pc which would be perfect for video editing for that price and even legal win 7, but now im dealing this flickering model - when it heats a lot, starts to flicker more times... it doesnt annoy so much when using mbp screen, though when external display is on, flicker looks like line going down from the top.

the funniest thing for me is that this macbook was the first bought thing from apple. not so lucky, need to say

Some PC laptops actually let you switch the graphics power mode on the fly. They have no problems so far. Apple can't do it, nor can they even get us a reliable system to do the silly amateurish workaround to switch graphics mode. Yeah Apple rocks!

Mine flickered so I took it for repair under warranty. The shop couldnt see any problem... at that time it only flickered now and again. Under apple's agreement, they replaced the logic board and the screen. I collected it 4 days ago and to be honest it is now much worse and is constantly flickering.

That's why I've not taken mine in for repair. I figure it'll come back worse than it is now. Right now it only flickers every few minutes at worst. I'd hate to see that get worse, which I suspect it would if it has the logic board replaced. Seems the newer ones are worse than the original '08 ones.

I've got a late '08 model that came with Leopard (10.5.5 or 10.5.6). I never saw any flickering at all until upgrading to Snow Leopard on the day it was released. I suspect software is the cause.

The Apple implementation of the Cisco VPN using Racoon cannot accomodate "EnableMSLogon" nor "MSLogonType" which means it cannot encode the password the way our VPN expects. Spotted this thread here related:
http://patternbuffer.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/customizing-the-cisco-or-ipsec-vpn -client-in-snow-leopard/

But this is off topic.

They have just replaced my logic board so fingers crossed this will fix it!

I too was having the 9400M blinking problem. Could the issue be from bad RAM? I received the late-2008 unibody MBP with a 3rd party RAM (Mushkin 2x2GB)installed and I had the blinking problem about 4-5 times each day. Before I took it to the Apple Store, I swapped out the Mushkin memory for some OEM (Hynix) 2x1GB that I took from a Mid-2009 13" MBP. So far (after about a day), the blinking seems much less frequent.
Perhaps this can explain why only 9400M mode is affected, since it shares system memory, whereas 9600M GT is independent and unaffected?

Just a theory

Why not ? But, in some cases, the 9600M GT is affected as well. Anyway, that's what I've noticed several times with my MBP.

Regards.

why is this question marked answered? i'm not about to look through all eleventy billion replies... but i'd really like to know what the "solution" is.

mine seems to be getting worse by the week, and my warranty is gone

sad panda here.